Expanding Intersectionality: Fictive Kinship Networks as Supports for the Educational Aspirations of Black Women

In this article, we use the concepts o f fictive kinship networks (Cook, 2011; Fordham, 1996; Stack, 1974) and intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991) to explore the deeply embedded attitudes found in certain religious doctrine about the value o f education for Black females and how these beliefs shape the educational aspirations o f Black females. Especially for Black women from more conservative, religious backgrounds, we identify fictive kinship networks as important to creating the vital emotional, spiritual and intellectual spaces necessary to imagine and explore educational possibilities. As an important protective factor, a fundamental function of fictive kin relationships is the nurturing and embracing o f black women s intellect

How We Can Pay for Health Care Reform

Describes savings and revenue sources and policies to reduce healthcare spending that could finance comprehensive reform with a public option, such as reducing physician and hospital payments, investing in prevention programs, and capping tax exclusions

Logistics and supply chain job placement: the 2007 perspective

The development of an effective recruitment strategy that attracts and secures entry-level logistics talent is essential to maintain corporate performance. A critical aspect of job placement involves understanding the preferences of students and employers. This research presents results of parallel surveys of U.S. undergraduate logistics, transportation and supply chain student and employer preferences and perceptions regarding employment. Results provided include a demographic respondent profile, their organization /functional area preferences and their perspectives on selected entry-level employment issues. These research results are intended to provide employers, educators and students with information that can be used to improve job placement success

Combined observations of meteors by image-orthicon television camera and multi-station radar

Observations from multiple sites of a radar network and by television of 29 individual meteors from February 1969 through June 1970 are reported. Only 12 of the meteors did not appear to fragment over all the observed portion of their trajectories. From these 12, the relation for the radar magnitude to the panchromatic absolute magnitude was found in terms of velocity of the meteor. A very tentative fit to the data on the duration of long enduring echoes versus visual absolute magnitude is made. The exponential decay characteristics of the later parts of several of the light curves are pointed out as possible evidence of mutual coalescence of droplets into which the meteoroid has completely broken

From Poison Peddlers to Civic Worthies: The Reputation of the Apothecaries in Georgian England

Trust is not automatically granted to providers of professional services. The doctors of Georgian England were, by later standards, deficient in medical knowhow, particularly before the mid-nineteenth-century scientific understanding of antiseptics, and much satirised. Nonetheless, the emergence of a coherent medical profession indicates that the picture was far more intricate and positive than the satirists implied. Patients sought care as well as cure; and medical practitioners had no problems in finding custom. This essay reassesses the apothecaries’ role in the slow transition whereby reputable practitioners differentiated themselves from ‘quacks’. The change was propelled by three linked processes: firstly, the intersection of expanding medical supply with insistent consumer demand, noting that demand plays a key role alongside supply; secondly, the intersection of local power-broking within Britain's growing towns with an ethos of community service, whereby apothecaries joined the ranks of ‘civic worthies’ and trusted care-givers; and, lastly, the intersection of shared medical knowledge among practitioners at all levels with the creation of a distinctive professional identity. As public trust grew, so Parliament was emboldened in 1815 to license the Apothecaries Society as the regulatory body for the medical rank-and-file, so launching the distinctive Anglo-American system of arm's-length state regulation

MULTIVARIATE STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF COLEOPTERA SPECTRAL REFLECTANCE

The insect order Coleoptera, commonly known as beetles, comprises 40% of all insects which in turn account for half of all identified animal species alive today. Coleopterans frequently have large elytra (the hardened front wings) that can have a wide range of colors. Spectral reflectance readings from these elytra may be used to uniquely identify coleopteran taxonomic groups. Multiple samples of eleven species of wood boring beetles were selected from the University of Idaho William Barr Entomology Museum. Spectrometer readings for each specimen were then fit to normal distribution mixture models to identify multiple peak reflectance wavelengths. Eighteen prominent peaks were identified across all taxonomic groups and genders creating a multivariate response structure. Multivariate statistical procedures including principal component and discriminant analyses were employed to assess the differentiation of taxonomic groups and genders based on spectral reflectance. The first three axes of the principal component analysis accounted for 96% of the variation and provided a clear clustering of genus and gender for a subset of taxonomic groups. The linear discriminant analysis under an assumption of multivariate normality provided a distinct classification of taxonomic groups resulting in an overall 4% misclassification rate; while the nearest neighbor discriminant analysis with a proportional prior gave an overall error rate of 5.2%. Internal bootstrap validation of the latter discriminant model yielded an average error rate of 3.5%. An external cross validation of the same model, conducted on independent samples of the same species with new individuals resulted in an average misclassification error rate of only 6.5%. Given the low error rates of misclassification, such multivariate statistical approaches are recommended for analysis of spectral reflectance in Coleoptera and other similar insect groups

A Superhydrophobic Cone to Facilitate the Xenomonitoring of Filarial Parasites, Malaria, and Trypanosomes Using Mosquito Excreta/Feces

Background: Molecular xenomonitoring (MX), the testing of insect vectors for the presence of human pathogens, has the potential to provide a non-invasive and cost-effective method for monitoring the prevalence of disease within a community. Current MX methods require the capture and processing of large numbers of mosquitoes, particularly in areas of low endemicity, increasing the time, cost and labour required. Screening the excreta/feces (E/F) released from mosquitoes, rather than whole carcasses, improves the throughput by removing the need to discriminate vector species since non-vectors release ingested pathogens in E/F. It also enables larger numbers of mosquitoes to be processed per pool. However, this new screening approach requires a method of efficiently collecting E/F. Methods: We developed a cone with a superhydrophobic surface to allow for the efficient collection of E/F. Using mosquitoes exposed to either Plasmodium falciparum, Brugia malayi or Trypanosoma brucei brucei, we tested the performance of the superhydrophobic cone alongside two other collection methods. Results: All collection methods enabled the detection of DNA from the three parasites. Using the superhydrophobic cone to deposit E/F into a small tube provided the highest number of positive samples (16 out of 18) and facilitated detection of parasite DNA in E/F from individual mosquitoes. Further tests showed that following a simple washing step, the cone can be reused multiple times, further improving its cost-effectiveness. Conclusions: Incorporating the superhydrophobic cone into mosquito traps or holding containers could provide a simple and efficient method for collecting E/F. Where this is not possible, swabbing the container or using the washing method facilitates the detection of the three parasites used in this study

Exploring Zeptosecond Quantum Equilibration Dynamics: From Deep-Inelastic to Fusion-Fission Outcomes in 58^{58}Ni+60^{60}Ni Reactions

Energy dissipative processes play a key role in how quantum many-body systems dynamically evolve towards equilibrium. In closed quantum systems, such processes are attributed to the transfer of energy from collective motion to single-particle degrees of freedom; however, the quantum many-body dynamics of this evolutionary process are poorly understood. To explore energy dissipative phenomena and equilibration dynamics in one such system, an experimental investigation of deep-inelastic and fusion-fission outcomes in the $^{58}$Ni+$^{60}$Ni reaction has been carried out. Experimental outcomes have been compared to theoretical predictions using Time Dependent Hartree Fock and Time Dependent Random Phase Approximation approaches, which respectively incorporate one-body energy dissipation and fluctuations. Excellent quantitative agreement has been found between experiment and calculations, indicating that microscopic models incorporating one-body dissipation and fluctuations provide a potential tool for exploring dissipation in low-energy heavy ion collisions.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, 1 table, including Supplemental Material - Version accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter